A young scientist takes a small brush, the kind you would use to clean a camera lens, and rubs it briskly down the back of an infant rat – a rat pup. No, he’s not giving rat pups a massage to relieve boredom. He’s actually doing research, funded by the federal government. If this strikes you as frivolous or a waste of tax dollars, consider this: a discovery resulting from these experiments led to a momentous change in how premature babies are cared for that has saved lives and billions of dollars in health care costs. Because of this research, thousands of preemies have survived, grown stronger, thrived, and gone on to live healthy lives.
Premature birth is a serious health concern. One out of eight infants in the United States is born prematurely, and such births are associated with neurodevelopmental impairment that has been shown to persist into adolescence. Moreover, the annual health care costs associated with premature birth and long stays in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) were estimated to be at least $26.2 billion in the U.S. in 2005, nearly $52,000 per infant. This, of course, does not include the emotional toll it takes on thousands of families.
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